SOMEBODY fire President Asif Zardari's public relations team already. One would have thought they would have learnt something after this summer's floods and French chateau fiasco. But the decision to attend a memorial service for the late Richard Holbrooke just days after failing to attend Salman Taseer's funeral is in equally poor taste.

The message could not be clearer: Zardari derives his political legitimacy from Washington, and not from his party or committed cadres back home.

It follows, then, that Zardari's Friday morning chat with US President Barack Obama made more headlines than his presence at the service for Mr Holbrooke. From the White House's point of view, the meeting kicked off what is being described as Obama's 'Pakistan year'. Zardari is expected to return to DC later this spring for a formal bilateral exchange, and Obama has promised to visit Pakistan in 2011. It may be a new year, but everything else is same old.

The presidents discussed (no surprises here) fighting terror, promoting regional security, and figuring out Afghanistan once and for all. Since the closed-door meeting was not followed by a press conference, one can only assume that Obama echoed US Vice President Joe Biden's call earlier this week for Pakistan to take firmer action against Al Qaeda and Taliban safe havens within its borders.

Having Washington's heaviest weights reiterate this message within days may count as overkill by some standards. But on this side of the Atlantic, the consensus is that Pakistan can more than hold its own in discussions on security and counter-terrorism. For entertaining the US's request to strike North Waziristan and increase intelligence sharing, Pakistan has earned another promise of aid and military equipment to fight terror, secured a pivotal role in negotiating the endgame in Afghanistan, and registered its case for sidelining India in the process.

Indeed, Pakistan is enjoying the cachet it currently has by virtue of the fact that the US is desperate to leave Afghanistan with some semblance of success — if not outright victory — starting this summer. If anything, Washington is now trying to define the point at which Islamabad's leverage should end.

That may be why economic reforms in Pakistan were also on the agenda. It is no secret that the US is frustrated by Pakistan's decision to delay implementation of the RGST and backtrack on the fuel price hike. Members of the US Congress are increasingly sceptical of the Obama administration's plans to continue pouring taxpayer dollars into Pakistan, with little accountability and few real returns.

The Obama administration had calculated that one way to keep the sceptics on board would be to involve Pakistanis in bankrolling their own democratic project and domestic struggle against terrorism, hence intensified pressure in recent months for Pakistan to expand its tax base and mobilise domestic resources. Thanks to the coalition government's recent theatrics, the unviability of that plan has been exposed, causing bilateral tensions in the economic realm to escalate.

Importantly, this week's meetings with Obama and Biden have helped mainstream the Pakistani perspective on this issue. The challenges of introducing new taxes and containing energy subsidies at a time of heightened political drama and deteriorating security are better understood. Pakistan has also used this opportunity to lodge further complaints about the slow delivery of much touted civilian aid. And according to Farhatullah Babar, the president's spokesman, in his meeting with Obama, Zardari re-emphasised Pakistan's desire for trade, not aid, and sought preferential access to American markets for local goods.

On the economic front, then, it seems as if the US may be more sympathetic and flexible towards Pakistan in coming days. After the presidential meet and greet, Ambassador Hussain Haqqani explained that the commitment to economic reform had been reaffirmed, but that it would now “[take] into consideration social and political factors”. This is far gentler positioning than US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's rebuke after the government's retraction of the nine per cent increase in petrol prices, which she described as a “mistake”.

However, much like home-grown extremism, the appalling state of the economy is an issue on which Pakistan must seize the initiative on its own accord. If the US becomes further enmeshed in pushing for economic reform, the issue will only be addressed in the Pakistani public sphere through the lens of terrorism.

The US's primary interest in stabilising the Pakistani economy is to disrupt what Abid Qaiyum Suleri of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute has termed the 'mullah-Marxist nexus'. The logic is that extremist organisations are able to recruit young Pakistanis because they are unemployed, chronically poor, and food-insecure. In this context, economic reform becomes a way to provide alternatives for would-be suicide bombers.

There is, of course, much truth to this argument. But for the PPP to sell the painful process of economic reform to the public and political opposition, it will have to adopt a far more holistic and visionary approach, one that cannot risk being misperceived by — or misrepresented by dissenting stakeholders — the average Pakistani as an American directive or agenda.

The fact is, achieving economic viability is the one thing that will legitimise the civilian government. The army is fully aware of how critical the need for a strong economic base is, but at this juncture it has its hands too full to take on the tedious responsibility of managing economic reform. The civilian government must thus take advantage of the confluence of the army and US's support by building political consensus around reforms and committing to improved governance to implement them. That may be the only way to begin to undo the damage caused by Zardari's inept PR team. huma.yusuf@dawn.com